Friday, May 17, 2013

Complacency

I recently completed a series of
conversations about democracy with a group of retired people. The
average age was between 70 and 75. In their working life, these men
and women had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers or business
people.

We talked about different versions
of democracy and about some of the shortcomings of actual
democracies, including our own.

In a democracy all citizens are
equal; every person has one vote. Everybody's ideas and needs are as
weighty as those of any other citizen. But, the members of the group
asked, is this democratic equality realizable in a society as unequal
as ours?

That thought led to the main
complaint: the role of money in politics. Citizens elect
representatives to represent their desires and interests. But once
elected, the representatives cater to the people with money, often
living in different electoral districts, not to the people who
elected them.

There are clearly many reasons for
that: electoral campaigns tend to begin on the day after the previous
elections. Campaigns are becoming more and more expensive. Rich
people can flood campaigns with money thereby buying access to the
Congressperson, if not the Congressperson him or herself. The others
are left out in the cold, unheard, unheeded.

These were some of the topics
touched upon in our conversations.

The last meeting was to be dedicated
to a summary. Everyone was to bring in a problem and a suggestion for
fixing it.

That conversation was complex and
interesting. But as we came to the end of it, various people kept
saying that, all in all, with all the difficulties we had touched
upon, “the democratic system works.”

There was considerable agreement to
that. After a series of conversations examining in some detail how
the democratic system does
not work, because
workplaces are, on the whole, dictatorial and authoritarian, because
the democratic system we have reflects the inequalities of our
economy, and citizens are not equal participants in politics,
everyone settled in with a happy sigh and agreed that, nevertheless,
the system works..

I was struck by this complacency
that made people say that money plays an excessive role in politics,
that our government is, often not a government of the people, but is
for sale to highest bidders but that nonetheless “the system
works.”

That struck me as a gross
contradiction. These were intelligent people. How can they say that
the system works while they complain that they are not represented,
that money again and again carries the day in Washington?

There are a number of explanations
for this complacency: If we seriously believe that our democracy is
in danger, we need to act. Being complacent is a lot less work.

Add to that, that while we tend to
brag about our freedom and our democracy we also tend to believe,
indoctrinated by periodic witch hunts like the McCarthyism of the
1950s, that it is unpatriotic
to be critical of how our
system works. It is true that we can be openly critical, much of the
time, without being persecuted by the police. But our fellow citizens
are not as tolerant.

The truth of course, is the
opposite. Complacency betrays our institutions and our ideals.

Our democracy is in great danger.
Not the least threat comes from the complacent “nevertheless the
system is working.”